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Management

Tom Watlington
Chief Executive Officer

Tom Watlington, whose experience in the medical device industry spans 28 years, joined Sotera Wireless as Chief Executive Officer in February 2006. During that year he served a dual role as President of Naviscan Pet Systems, a medical imaging company, before transitioning to a full-time position with Sotera Wireless in January 2007.For ten years prior to joining Sotera Wireless, Mr. Watlington served as Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations and later as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Biosite Incorporated, a leader in the field of medical diagnostics. In addition, he spent fourteen years at Boehringer Mannheim Corporation in various sales, marketing and strategic roles, including Vice President of Marketing for the Diabetes Care division.

Mr. Watlington previously served on the board of Home Diagnostics, Inc., a public company in the field of diabetes monitoring that was acquired in June 2010 by Nipro Diagnostics. He received a bachelor of science degree from the University of Maryland.

Charlie AlvarezSenior Vice President, Sales and Marketing

Charlie Alvarezjoined Sotera Wireless in September 2014 as the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. He began his career with PSS/World Medical (now McKesson). At that time, PSS was an $11M medical equipment distributor and has now grown to over $5B in sales. Charlie was PSS’s youngest Vice President running sales for the Eastern and Northern Regions, based in New York.His last position was Vice President of Corporate Development with responsibilities in pioneering new markets and sales development.

In April of 2003 Charlie joined PDSHeart as Executive Vice President of Sales, responsible for expanding the sales force to cover the entire continental U.S. He successfully hired, trained and grew the sales force from 9 reps and $3M in revenues in 2003 to 35 reps and over $25M in 2006. At PDSHeart, he managed sales, marketing, training, and developing the sales strategy. In March of 2007, PDSHeart was acquired by CardioNet. Charlie joined CardioNet as Executive Vice President of Sales. He led the road show for a capital raise of over $110M of institutional funding for CardioNet’s acquisition of PDSHeart. Charlie was responsible for leading the direct sales force and expanding the CardioNet product offering to hospital systems and cardiologists across the country.

In 2008, Charlie Co-Founded Watermark Medical where he served as President until 2013 when Watermark Medical acquired SleepMed, Inc., a privately held sleep diagnostics and therapy company focused on improving the clinical outcomes of patients with sleep disorders and other chronic diseases. Charlie served as the EVP of Sales and Marketing where he built a leading and innovative sales company that focuses on selling diagnostic home sleep testing devices to hospitals and physician offices in the US through both a direct sales force and through leading medical product distributors. He has grown the company from inception in 2008 to over $90M in sales in 2014.

Charlie graduated cum laude from Florida State University with a B.S. in Communications.

Benjamin Kanter, M.D., FCCPChief Medical Officer

Dr. Kanter joined Sotera in September 2014 after having served as the Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) for Palomar Health in San Diego.He graduated from the University of Michigan with Distinction and Honors after which he received his Medical degree and Internal Medicine training at Northwestern University in Chicago.He completed post-doctoral studies in both Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine at the U.C.S.D. Medical center in California where he remained on clinical faculty after graduation.Dr. Kanter is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Disease, Medical Informatics, and received special certification in Critical Care.While at Palomar health he chaired the departments of Medicine at both Palomar Medical Center and Pomerado Hospital, founded and directed Palomar’s Sleep Disorders Laboratory, and was Chief of Staff at Pomerado Hospital.Dr. Kanter has been a member of numerous corporate advisory boards including: Cisco, Nuance, AirStrip Technologies, and Spyglass Consulting.

Dr. Kanter became CMIO for Palomar Health in 2006 and was a member of their executive management team.In that role, he was responsible for the development of clinical information systems.During his tenure at Palomar, Dr. Kanter led their electronic health record implementation during which his organization moved from a HIMSS level-2 to a level-6 at all acute care facilities.He has a special interest in mHealth and has worked on an advanced secure messaging solution with Qualcomm, and is the co-developer of the MIAA (mobile EHR) platform, now licensed to AirStrip Technologies.Working with Extension Healthcare, Dr. Kanter created a unique ‘reverse lookup’ smartphone application which allows physicians to search for patients and immediately identify and contact their assigned nurse.He has been involved with Sotera since 2009 when he targeted the ViSi platform for implementation at Palomar’s new campus which subsequently opened in August 2012.In 2013 Palomar became the first site live with Sotera’s advanced monitoring system, and in 2014 was the first site live with full Sotera-EHR integration.In recognition of his leadership and achievements, he has been a frequent speaker at health conferences across the United States and was the 2013 Southern California nominee for the national HIMSS Physician IT Leadership Award.

James Moon
Chief Technology Officer

Mr. Moon joined Sotera Wireless in December 2008, bringing extensive achievement in the field of patient monitoring. Among his most notable accomplishments, Mr. Moon founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Protocol Systems, Inc., a highly successful patient monitoring company. Following 14 years of successful product introductions and consistent financial performance, the publicly traded company was acquired by Welch-Allyn.Prior to Protocol Systems, Mr. Moon directed the development of the first ethernet-based patient monitoring system, the Alpha PC Monitor, at SpaceLabs, Inc. Subsequent to Protocol Systems, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Serveron Corporation and as Chief Executive Officer of Lifecom Inc. At Lifecom, Mr. Moon played a key role in the development of artificial intelligence systems for medical diagnosis.

Mr. Moon has served on the boards of both public and privately held companies. He also served on the Executive Committee and as Chairman of the Oregon Chapter of the American Electronics Association. In 1991, Inc. Magazine named Mr. Moon Entrepreneur of the Year for the Northwest Region of the United States.

Mark Spring joined Sotera Wireless as Chief Financial Officer in July 2013. He has 17 years of experience in life sciences including the diagnostic, medical device, biotech and pharmaceutical sectors. He previously served as Chief Financial Officer for Veracyte, Inc., Prometheus Laboratories Inc. (acquired by Nestle in 2011) and Hyperion Therapeutics, Inc. Mr. Spring also held senior finance roles with MedImmune, Inc. (acquired by AstraZeneca in 2007), Baxter International, Inc., Dade Behring Inc., Caremark International Inc. and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Mr. Spring received a bachelor degree in Business Administration from Monmouth College and is a Certified Public Accountant.

David Stroup
Vice President, Operations and Mechanical Development

David Stroup joined Sotera in September 2011 and currently serves as the Vice President of Operations and Mechanical Development; he brings vast experience in automated manufacturing and processing systems for the medical device, bio-diagnostic and pharmaceutical fields. David is an expert in the conceptualization and design of complex automated process and manufacturing systems and has extensive knowledge and know how in product and process development with an emphasis on automated manufacturability. Previously, David founded and served as the Chief Executive Officer for Prodosyst Automation. David grew and diversified his customer list to include several Fortune 500 companies including Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Inverness, Guidant Corporation, Cardinal Health, Tyco Health, Welch Allyn, and C R Bard. David applies his expertise at the foundation level of development producing designs with a strong emphasis on manufacturability.

David holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from San Diego State University, in addition to an extensive portfolio of automation and manufacturing processes developments, he is also responsible for the design patents of multiple disposable medical and bio-diagnostic devices.

Jim Welch
Executive Vice President, Product Development

Jim Welch joined Sotera in 2011. He spent 17 years of his career as a hospital based Clinical Engineer, ten of which were at Massachusetts General Hospital where he created one of the first WiFi based general care floor multi-parameter monitoring systems. He was recruited to Protocol Systems in 1990 to commercialize the system. He held various executive positions in Engineering, Marketing, Quality and General Management at Protocol Systems, later Welch Allyn (after Protocol was acquired by them) and recently at Masimo. In 2011 Jim received the AAMI Foundation/Institute for Technology in Health Care Clinical Application Award for his collaboration with hospital based clinicians in delivering innovative technology solutions that dramatically improve patient safety.

The ViSi Mobile System has received CE mark and is currently FDA cleared for continuous monitoring of ECG, Heart/Pulse Rate, SpO2, Blood Pressure (cuff-based and cuffless on a beat-to-beat basis), Respiration Rate and Skin Temperature. Posture/Activity are in final stages of development and are not yet cleared.